


False Fruit

by Keturagh



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Death, Dread Wolf Rises, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Origin Story, Other, Past Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Solavellan Hell, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, dragon age 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28853727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: The Inquisitor's spirit is raised by the inner circle of the disbanded Inquisition, in an age of war where the Heraldic Chantry fears the Dread Wolf, Fen'Harel, their former companion and friend Solas, undetered on his quest to burn their world to restore the world of the Elvhen People. Dorian thrusts the Inquisitor's spirit forcibly out of the present era of the Dragon Age, far, far back in time. Will encountering Solas in this distant past save the world of the future? Why did the Inquisitor's spirit lack all memory of the humble mage apostate whose love in life they'd treasured?
Relationships: Fade Spirit(s)/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Female Character(s), Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas (Dragon Age)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	1. Canon

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you deeply to [@redinkofshame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedInkOfShame/pseuds/RedInkOfShame) for beta reading, for our hours lorehounding together, and for our friendship, I'm super grateful!!! tysm for all you endure.

#### Exaltations 1: Portents of the Maker's Return

A vision of the future granted to Drakon by Andraste, canonized as the Canticle of Exaltations of the Chant of Light.

(7) And those who slept, the ancient ones, awoke,  
For their dreams had been devoured

By  
a demon  
that prowled  
the Fade

As a wolf  
hunts a herd of deer.

Taking first the weakest and frailest  
of hopes,

And when there was  
nothing  
left,  
Destroying  
the bright and bold  
By subtlety and ambush  
and cruel  
arts.

(8) The ninth sacred mountain upon which rests  
The mortal dust of Our Lady ascended  
Whole into the heavens, to be given high honor  
In the Realm of Dreams forever.  
And around it, a chorus of spirits sang:  
“Whatsoever passes through the fire  
Is not lost, but made eternal;  
As air can never be broken nor crushed,  
The tempered soul is everlasting!”  
(9) And I looked up and saw  
The seven gates of the Black City shatter,  
And darkness cloaked both realms.  
(10) I covered my face, fearful,  
But the Lady took my hands from my eyes,  
Saying, “Remember the fire. You must pass  
Through it alone to be forged anew.  
Look! Look upon the Light so you  
May lead others here through the darkness,  
Blade of the Faith!”  
(11) In dread I looked up once more  
And saw the darkness warp and crumble,  
For it was thin as samite,  
A fragile shroud over the Light  
Which turned it to ash.  
(12) And the Maker, clad in the majesty of the sky,  
Set foot to earth, and at His touch  
All warring ceased. The vicious  
Beasts lay down and were quieted;  
The meek lambs became bold  
And rose up, casting aside their shepherds  
To dance at the Maker’s feet.  
(13) From every corner of the earth  
The Chant of Light echoed,  
As the Maker walked the land  
With Andraste at His right hand.  
And they reached the gates of Minrathous,  
Where once a terrible fire swept  
The Light of redemption from the face of the world,  
And there, the Lady of Restitution  
Drew her shining sword  
And plunged it into the ground at her feet, saying:  
The sins of creation are redeemed  
(14) “All sins are forgiven! All crimes pardoned!  
Let no soul harbor guilt!  
Let no soul hunger for justice!  
By the Maker’s will I decree  
Harmony in all things.  
Let Balance be restored  
And the world given eternal life.”


	2. Recitation

A coyote is a creature of puzzles / of the next hardest thing / of unraveling / steeping tea / patiently sit / then she says come here and drink / witness transformation


	3. the dog who loves you

the dog who loves you  
says my hunger  
is less important  
your hunger  
comes first

(but he will take  
what he can  
when your back is turned)

the dog goes  
woof  
the wolf goes  
aahwa— aahwa—— aahwaa————


	4. Conglutinated

Wrenched asunder, the living soul left their form behind, then became a shining blade, and the blade fell up into the sky. This is how it was: no longer were there hours nor days, nor nights, but only the tidal shifting of eternity. This is how it was: no longer were there distinctions, but above was the river of blades in the sky. And the blades were stars and the river was pulled, and sometimes the river jumped her banks; that is how it was.

Then from that Void, a voice.

_Dear friend. I miss you._

A memory stirred.

_You started to knit these socks for that girl in the inn, and never finished. Well, there are some things I remember from my childhood. Knitting is one of them. Although I cannot, I’m afraid, knit with the skill you possessed. Still, I shall attempt to finish what you started. I suppose… Let me start by telling you the story of what has happened to that little girl. I brought her and her younger brother to the Divine’s City — to High Haven, you remember? — that city is already half-haunted with all the spirits Vivienne has tempted to its streets with her sigils; it reminds me too much of the crypts in Nevarra… Of course Divine Victoria is within her rights to raise whatever magics she wishes to raise on the hill where Andraste’s ashes were once brought to rest. But back to that girl, I will tell you the story: She and her brother have taken up the sword in service of the Inquisition…_

The sheathed blade burned.

This is how it was, and now it wasn’t.

In unending stasis, something changed.

_Yes, yes! Like that! Reaching, rewarding, the roundness of a familiar voice… There is some reason… yes! You healed the hurt, made the sky go back behind, it helped…_

A memory stirred.

It was becoming… something. Not a blade. Not a star. It was being called.

_Heyyy boss… This isn’t exactly something I’m comfortable with. Sure. Right. I’m talking to a… you know what? Uh, you liked making rope. I like making rope. I’m going to just sit here and make some rope. Good? Good… urgh…._

Fibre grasps itself, rope is made: this is how it was. There was a blue sky behind the white mountain the night it first reached, reverent, to touch the quiet lone man’s hand.

(His increasingly strong demands for release. He housed strong, but inscrutable emotions under his smile. He left the mountain showing a shiver in his soul.)

There were distinctions, it was like this:

_Going to come out, hm? No? Well, your stubbornness certainly hasn’t changed. You’ll simply never guess what I’ve brought for you today, darling. Not just the flowers. Do you like them? They do smell divine. You never quite got the trick of weaving those rose crowns, did you dear? We spent so many hours chatting away as I showed you the designs… Tut… but here is one I have woven for you, if you’d like, my friend. Now what has brought me here, it is your sweetheart of an uncle. He is traveling. He will be here. Just as just as soon as we can get him over the mountains, he will be here, and he asked me to repeat this story to you as often as I am able. I am… I’m honored, Herald. Honored by his trust in me, to speak these rites in his place. It is deeply humbling to be taught words which have been spoken far longer than humans have existed in Thedas. Ahem---_

Better. Closer. Realer, her voice changed; she said in the beautiful words:

_The Knightly Rites, Chanted First, read second. Ahem. This is how it was. The recitation begins:_  
_A wolf is a creature of puzzles /_  
_of the next hardest thing /_  
_of unraveling /_  
_steeping tea /_  
_patiently sit /_  
_then she says come here and drink /_  
_witness transformation…._

On top of a river there are ripples where a fish goes to eat.

On top of the world there are ripples where a spirit goes to feast.

This is how it was:

_Hiya Inky. Guess I’m supposed to come up here and tell you bawdy stories or whatever — I told Dorian I didn’t like it alright? I told him if you’re there to hear you hear me as well wherever as here, but he says it’s gonna do some sort of thingamathing with your whatsits until yer unk gets here. …. Um, so anyway. I’m not at all mad or anything, just so you know! But well just truly not-going around it kinda to say, I was thinking about how… there was this time, when you and I got on a roof in the real posh end of Val Royeaux watching the rich farts go by. And we were out to make the good kind of trouble, except there were some tightwads hunting you, and this’s the story of how we … well, you remember! …_

The merciful sister came in the snow singing in the dawn in her long red hair, her black feathered hood, her violet woolen frock against the cold: Dear friend, I miss you, she always started. It was a beautiful song.

_Well well. Hey there, Pug. Say, did I ever tell you about the time I went up a mountain with a crazy Dalish girl? Hawke found this old Pride demon up there. It goes a little something like this…._  
_… Anyway. Guess all I’ve gotten good at these days is telling stories to graves… ’til next time, Inquisitor…_

Then, the sound of bells. The ground withered. Then it shook. The city on the snowy mountainside rocked, and the buildings emerged by their foundations, shaken by the bucking of the earth as if the city rose atop a living, creeping thing. 

_Terribly sorry we didn’t get him here sooner. Some trouble on the roads… not to mind about that now. Come along, yes it’s quite a spectacular sight! No, no. Over here. Your Uncle is here, my dear, dear old chum, and I am only so sorry, so very sorry you don’t have more time. My deepest apologies… Here he is…_

_I will hold them off as long as I can…._

Then it changed: with fire, and familiar herbs.

  
Someone is humming.

Familiar herbs. The smell the same as fire on Gathering nights. A soothing song, sung by an uncle, friend, mentor.

“What do you want to be?” he asks.

Beside him, the First to the Keeper of Clan Lavellan sits with their yarn tangled into an incomprehensible mess in the basket in their lap. The black and grey crosses, the blue lines. Their mother loves this basket. Their mother borrows it to gather the squashes she uncovers in the forest.

“You wanna be like your mamae?” Uncle asks. “Your papae?”

He laughs and draws a careful, bubbling toke off his pipe when they vigorously shake their head: no. His root cloud is white in the cold winter air. 

“No? Not your mamae or your papae, huh? That doesn’t surprise me, little one.”

There is the sound of arguing always in the tense home mother and father share. Watch the clouds go fast overhead. Knots in the yarn come apart; the yarn goes flat, becomes an uninterrupted line.

“Why are you here?” he asks.

He’s humming a song and blowing his smoke on the fire.

“Why did you choose the vallaslin of Sylaise?” he asks.

His vallaslin coils around his left eye, the vallaslin of Sylaise. They touch their eye where vallaslin coils, the vallaslin of Sylaise.

“I like the woven crafts,” they answer. 

“Show me,” he gestures at the yarn. They carefully knit a square with a design of the gods. He peers at it. He points to the missed stitches, the errors in the pattern. “Next time, try to remember this count by placing a marker. Good work. Try again.”

They unravel the knitting and try again.

“You wield that runic arm you’ve brought with you into the Beyond with more finesse than the thwarfae who made it,” he comments appreciatively. “Your hands are deft. But we are not meant to choose our vallaslin for what we can do, little one. What you are skilled at is not important to me. What I wanna know is, why do you wear the vallaslin?”

“I am Dalish,” they answer easily.

“Yes, although having vallaslin does not make you Dalish all at once, little one, so there’s good reason to ask. Who are you going to be? What makes that vallaslin,” he gestures to their eye, “worth having?”

There is the sound of the sea crashing on the crags. Their uncle pins blankets up on a line to dry. A smell of salt and soap makes the air crinkle cleanly in the summer heat. 

They untie knots in the yarn in their basket. The fire crackles with the smell of certain herbs. There are busy sounds from all the aravels, and children running along the crags. “I wear the vallaslin because when I was four, you showed me the tools for making vallaslin and taught me how each one was decorated, and I wanted to do what you did.”

He leaves the washing and steps across the fire, and enters an aravel. He looks a little surprised, but he lays his hand flat in the gesture that means, go on, I’m listening.

They go from place to place in the traveler’s wagon, touching the baskets, the linens, the blankets. “You showed me the way the stories of the gods are carved on each reed needle, and then let me use your tools. You let me interrupt you, always, every time I brought a reed from the forest.”

“And every time you brought a reed that would not serve in ceremony, you were so sad.” He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the memory.

Around their enchanted, runic fingers, they tie the knots of Halla-Horns, Ladder, River, Reverse Heart.

“Then I learned to knit towels and clothing, and make rope. I got this vallaslin from my family, for my family.”

He nods, and he is crying only a little, and he smiles. “Yes, you are Dalish so you wear the vallaslin. I love you dearly, little one. Thank you for remembering me.”

There is a thrumming, pulsing song coming from the sea outside the aravel. They touch the wooden table, the baskets under the beds, breathe deeply the smell of the herbs hanging to dry from the ceiling.

“I want to be home,” they shift and look at him, suddenly agitated. “I want to be home, please, take me there, take me home.” 

Their uncle grins and holds the pipe up for them to smoke. The heavy smoke burns down their throat and tickles the back of their nose.

“… I think there is a reason you don’t know your nature, little one.” He sounds coy, and their frustration dwindles into curiosity.

“How do you mean?” 

“It is unusual,” her uncle takes the yarn and studies it. Then he throws the yarn into the air. The aravel disappears. The yarn hangs on the air. “I ask you what you want to be, and you tell me a people, then you tell me a place. You’re trying to answer but you can’t yet. Something is keeping you from knowing. There’s something you have yet to discover.”

No basket, no sea, no blue summer day. It is winter, cold, and quiet. The fire smells nice, their uncle looks older. Still patient, still kind, his smile sad.

“I don’t want to be alone!” They struggle for the words behind a barrier. It has been cold lately. They have wanted to be near the ones who speak, who tell stories, who remember…

“Good. That’s a good start — “

 _“I’m so sorry, it must be now!”_ They both hear the voice, his shout filled with fear.

“Gently,” their uncle warns, with his hands up as if to soothe someone unseen beyond the light of the fire. But he is answered with agitation.

_“We haven’t a moment longer. If this is to be attempted at all, this is the time.”_

“Alright. I understand.” Their uncle takes their hands in his, and he smiles and says with an exaggerated laugh, “Are you really going to expect it to come all at once? Give yourself time to figure it out, little one. We miss you. We remember you.”

“No… No! Wait!”

_“Remember that we love you, very much…”_

Then there is a sickening jolt: a mage changes the world. 

Thrust away from the mountain, they are set adrift out of the influence of the physical realm, and fully into the realm of the Fade.

  
Already the memory of the aravel was fading. The memory of their uncle, of his soft laugh and his smell of burnt root, fading.

They were propelled by radiant magic through the Fade, sensing nothing but the Void. They had left the fire with the scent of herbs far behind.

Yet though they wanted to stop, still the magic pushed them on. They felt the sides and center of what was propelling them, and recognized a spell, part banishment, part time. A spell pushed them through the Fade in a disorienting direction. They tried to push against it and failed, unable to match the incredible inertia afforded by the immense willpower which had compelled their spirit; a powerful spell crafted by a powerful necromancer.

But even this spell wasn’t strong enough.

They traveled far. And then, reached an end.

An end like a wall, a massive barrier.

Dark.

Cold.

Stasis could not subsume them here, so swallowed by panic, they held their stomach, and tucked their head, and shook side to side, and could not break through the wall before them, nor turn and travel back the way they had come. With their runic hand against the wall they trudged beside it, feeling for any weakness, until their legs gave out, and their throat ached from shouting, and they fell to their knees. 

But it was not enough to end like this. Something was happening back where their friends were, where their uncle was, where the world was trembling. The city was standing and shaking off the mud. Their friends needed their help. They clawed the barrier with their runic hand. They took it in their teeth and gnawed.

But the end was here.

  
_no, groans the wolf_

_no_

_drawn long over the dark cold:_

_aahwa— aahwa—— aahwaa————_


	5. The Union of a Subtle Earth

_‘I have always made a distinction between pictures seen in the memory of nature and visions of actual beings now existing in the inner world. We can make the same distinction in our world: I may close my eyes and see you as a vivid picture in memory, or I may look at you with my physical eyes and see your actual image. In seeing these beings of which I speak, the physical eyes may be open or closed: mystical beings in their own world and nature are never seen with the physical eyes.’ - Evans-Wentz, W. Y., collected tales_

* * *

At first all they felt was the heat. But the heat faded. Disorientation covered their sense of reality; they remembered a pulling sensation, and then a feeling of passage.

Now they were on the other side, they knew, but of what? 

A trilling, soft with croaks of frogs accompanying, woke them. Songs of birds from somewhere chiming recognizable melodies, the mouths of Bluejay, Jackdaw, Little Seed Burier, Blackbird, Goose: singers and criers and gossipers, a whole choir clamoring somewhere distantly above.

The ruckus helped them find their feet, wobbling in dark, ankle-deep water. Their runic arm dislocated as they put weight on it to stand, and the spaces between the runes stretched queerly, causing pain to flare throughout the phantom of where their arm of flesh had once been mangled and destroyed by strange magic. Their strangled gasp echoed eerily back to their ears, flat and wrong. They felt that a dead void had eaten the sound. But their arm was still twisting gruesomely, stretching the spells as each rune’s polarity flipped and strained to fly apart. Their throat struggled to form words in short bursts, recitations of spellwork into the flat air. Their arm sparked, and in pain they shouted and held their shoulder. Like old times. The spells holding the runes grew weaker the farther they stretched apart.

They would lose the most distant runes if they didn’t control them _now_.

Find something… ! 

They concentrated, mustered their will. Their thoughts accumulated into remembrances of the colors of yarn, the weft of rope. _Just like this, do it this way_ , they put their willpower to work. They told the runes to knit, purl, knit, imagined a pattern, and held the instructions firmly and clearly in their mind. 

Though the pain in their arm was immense, the runes heard and, like living things, considered this proposition. The runes slowed, then halted and reversed, slithering back into the shape of an arm. 

If a limb could sulk….

They squeezed tears from their eyes and coughed. They felt hazy and tired, they had to hurry, to find a way out before they lost this level of clarity again… they tried to locate the source of the birdsong, and when they looked upward, their laugh went bubbling into the deadened void that stretched interminably — a world was suspended above.

“What in the Beyond…?” they blurted, overcome by wonder. 

Like stalactites, mountains girded the upper horizon where the moons and stars normally made their twinned traversals. In the world above, there was water also, and it glittered with every color, refracting like slithering rainbows. From the mountains, the snakes of water opened their maws on shining seas, glimmering lakes, and tributaries arraigned like stained glass. End to end across the horizon, opal waters curled around hills, pooled in valleys, and thundered off cliffs. These waters fed plants and fell upwards from snug clouds to nourish the emerald canopies of trees. The world above pulsed, forests flowering and then breathing out in flames, mountaintops shifting and then collapsing into ash, new forests exploding over the gray bones of the old. That world was unspeakably beautiful. It’s presence dominated the sky in all directions; there were no stars.

“How do I get there?” they wondered aloud, and were startled when a voice answered.

“ _Ohh_ , little kitten! And who are _you_?”

They tore their gaze from the world above. “Hello? Who’s there?”

But there was no one. They tried to scramble away, water splashing as they looked all around. It was desolate, and there was nothing. There was no place for someone else to hide.

Drawn by the sharp call of a black bird, they looked back for answers at the world above. None were forthcoming. They could still hear the songs and calls. There were living things in that world above. They peered closer, and realized they could perceive flying shapes flitting between the trees, soaring in the clouds; and not just the shapes of birds.

“Who’s there?” they whispered, unable to look away from the jewel floating upside-down above them, dominating the sky.

That world came closer, didn’t it? The longer they gazed at the changing trees? It was stretching down to where they were, getting nearer and nearer, revealing more of its wonders the longer they gazed upon it…

They watched the snowy peaks melt and rivers peel back along their banks, lakes blossoming and then drying in an instant. The world rippled with light on its waters and shadows on its swaying trees. Moons sprouted arms and legs, sat criss-cross, then stretched and toppled forests. Dragons flew, their scales sharp as knives. Curling away from the trees far below — suddenly spires crystalized from the air. There were bright lights moving amongst the spires of these golden, shining cities. 

They yearned, suddenly, for their family, for home.

The moon had a face.

It looked at them. It saw them. It saw! A mass of boulders shifted and the golden cave widened: an eye moving inside a head. They turned and ran. They felt their arm complaining, the runes clacking unhappily, but they forced their legs to run. The eye saw them, followed them, more and more eyes opening and probing, bright, pulling, questing, hunting. 

They smelled familiar herbs, saw fire, and dove into the shelter of a fire made on fir logs stacked in a circle of smooth white stones. They curled into a ball and hid deep inside the flames.

The moon looked, but did not see them. After it stopped looking, its eyes closed and did not reopen. 

When they ventured again to peer up at the world above, the moon was a mountain. The river a river. The sea the sea. The changing world above and the creatures within it trembled always like a plucked string, facades of rock and ice and water undergoing perpetually changing, monstrous transmutations. 

Inside the fire that was inside the dead void, their resolve grew in remembering, and something from that world above called out to them.

They had to reach it, even if it drew the attention of the monstrous moon with the face, or whatever creature had spoken from the nothingness. 

They stretched their arms up. By willpower, a soft and certain spell, they could draw that shifting world nearer. Their hands glowed like a beacon with the effort. As it came closer, like a song drifting around its melody under a bard’s improvisation, it also resolved into distinct form. 

Rivers, fires, forests.

Forests.

River Birch and Sycamore, Walnut, Heartnut, Sylvanpine, Hophornbeam and Fir. Maples: sugars, silvers, blacks and reds. Dawnelm, Pickpocket’s Willow, Eastern Dragonbough. Siblings embracing in close-hewn canopies, and beside those trees they could name, there were hundreds, thousands of proud conifers and tangly winter-bared fruiting trees they could not. The vines and mosses that bearded their boughs were likewise more unfamiliar than known, some luminescent like deep mushrooms, and others bursting with floral blooms.

Hungrily, they dragged the above-world closer.

Birdsongs.

_Closer, closer… ! Yes!_

Both hands hooked into the bark of the tallest Dragonsbough. Its trunk was many barrels wide. Each of its leaves could shelter a drake. The rest of the above-world was peeled back around this point like a thread pulling through a stitch; they felt camaraderie in the sharp-smelling sap welling up from the wounds under their fingertips. The swallowing muck at their feet threatened to suck them from the perch, so with a spell of fastening they anchored their runic arm into the bark, and then risked lifting their other hand to their lips to slurp greedily at the tree’s gift. They suckled the sap like they had as a child in the thawing time of the tree-taps. Dragonsbough was rarer than Crystal Grace, its sap prized for sweetness. It tingled in their belly. They laughed triumphantly, almost crying from the exhaustion that weighed in them, their willpower almost spent. Their runic hand held fast. Stronger for the warm gift from the Dragonsbough, they grabbed hold with both hands and heaved, straining, finally, with a pop and a painful wrench, to drag their feet out of the muddy waters where they’d awoken. 

Still hanging on the limb like a ribbon in the wind, they glanced back at their feet. They were kicking up into empty air. There was nothing where they’d come from. No river, only blue sky.

Another gush of sap coated their hands. They turned hungrily to it, slurping the warm sticky liquid, suckling directly from the rough bark, thanking the Dragonsbough between mouthfuls. The leaves echoed, _toom-toom_ , as they rustled together, like the low rumble of drums, or the laugh of a mother.

“That’s not enough. That’s not enough to make you,” the silky voice interjected once more. The voice was impatient and sniffy. “That’s not enough to make you, little one.”

“Ah!” They spun awkwardly and almost lost their grip. If they did, they’d be floating helplessly into the clear blue sky. They saw no one again. “Who’s there? Reveal yourself, and say your name!” they commanded.

A bubbly, shrill laugh seemed to come from the tree itself. “Observe closely, kitten! I will show you how it’s done.” The voice took on a formal intonation, ceremonial. “I am the urge to contain the whole of the world. I am insatiable, and without boundary. I devour past hunger, I consume beyond reason.” Their ominous recitation ended, the demon chirped, “Call me Voracity, sweetness!”

The sensation of a presence resolved into something with form, and next to their runic arm a petite prairie wolf sat on a branch with its ears perked and its tail wrapped around its legs. It was glass, not flesh. It was glass the color of a peach split open and likewise translucent. Its rosy fur caught the light and cast rainbows around its prim paws. Its eyes were strips of moonlight. It was veiny, the chambers of its form connected by filaments of light.

“You’re a demon,” they observed, and Voracity sniffed.

“Such a fine welcome. Your style of diplomacy is unchanged by death, I see. Though… you will not answer? Who you are? Here now sweetness, I’ve been helping you regain consciousness for centuries. Do you know? That is very hard work. Now I am…. ” it licked its lips, its glowing golden eyes going bright, “so very hungry, kitten. I am so very, very hungry. Perhaps… if you cannot tell me who you are, I shall eat what’s left of you, this scrumptious meal I have prepared… I will have you for myself, and sleep happily through what is to come…”

The fangs on the creature were too wide when it smiled, too many teeth for the size of its mouth.

They replied carefully, firmly. “I have not insulted you, Voracity. You surprised me. I don’t rebuke or reject you, and I don’t want to make you an enemy.”

Voracity blinked, and then flicked its paw. “Then show the manners of a friend, if it is not mine enemy thou wish to be. Introduce yourself, sweetness!”

“I am…” they squinted, faltering, failing.

Voracity sniffed. “Sweaty balls of Valor,” it sighed. “Just try.”

“Something’s wrong,” they said. “I don’t know how.” 

If a prairie wolf could look smug, this one did. “No, I don’t think so. We have done far too much work and you are already manifesting: you know yourself. I grow bored, and that is dangerous for me. I do not wish to eat you,” it hedged, “yet. So, I will do the last I can! Name yourself, spirit.” Its glassy voice echoed with deep magic, indefatigable.

With a rush of personhood, their shape resolved out of nothingness into the shape of the Herald of Andraste, the Inquisitor of the Heraldic Chantry, a spirit which had once been, and remained ever, a First of Clan Lavellan. They looked like their Uncle. They had his vallaslin. Their left arm was a runic prosthetic, their right alike to the rest of their born flesh, and both hands grasped the branches of a blooming tree with opalescent flowers crowded close enough to touch. 

“I’m gonna…. I think I’m gonna throw up,” they moaned. Every finger, toe, and piece in between felt knit together with cold, clammy strings of catgut. “Oh, I hate this.”

Then the flowers bent and folded under a sudden, fierce wind. The gale shook the branches so hard they creaked and cracked against each other. The flowers seemed to sing. 

They fought their nausea and had to fight the wind, grasping tighter to the branch. They tried to wrap a leg around it for purchase, but the branch was far too thick.

“This is who you once were. Fine!” Voracity’s tail twitched, raising its voice over the sound of the wind but otherwise unperturbed by the storm. “But this is all aesthetics, kitten. I need to know your _name_.”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there!” they snapped. Their hand scratched at the bark, pulling up sticky sap under their fingernails. The wind threatened to blast them from the branch. Voracity sniffed but they ignored it, closed their eyes and concentrated, trying to remember. “I am… I am home. I am the designs on the altar where the embroidery is kept. I am shelter for toes and ears, and a blanket that breathes when it’s warmed by hot stones.” The wind threatened to shove their grasp from the branch, and they heard Voracity urging them to hurry. They gritted their teeth and continued.

“I am warm cookies, and sturdy rope, and woven flowers. I am the place the weary return. I am rest, family, familiarity, I am…” they struggled to name all that this was and found it, at last, the Elvish word for, “Hearth.”

“Hearth! Lovely to meet you, kitten! We’ve got to move on, it’s not safe to stay here long!” Voracity paced, oozing excitement. “Oh yes, that’s just perfect! Jump on!”

Hearth blinked at the little prairie wolf. “I can’t. You’re too small.”

Voracity sniffed. “You’re too big. You have to let go!”

Under a strong blast of the gales, they panicked at the thought of letting go. _It will take me_ , Hearth thought, not really sure what force they instinctively feared, but somehow distrusting the big open blue sky. The Dragonbough’s well of warm sap puddled thickly under their hands. They yelped, and almost let go out of surprise. _Wait, are my arms on fire? Am I — on fire?!_ After their panic subsided, they realized that their body emanated the flames like a shroud. A roasty char cooked the bark under their hands of flame, and made the sap smell toasty-sweet.

“You won’t let me get hurt?” they shouted. 

Voracity sighed. “I won’t let you get hurt, sweetness.”

So, trusting the demon, Hearth let go.

They tumbled into the wind.

Voracity caught them on its back. Hearth grabbed the glassy fur and held on. Voracity was now many times bigger than Hearth, and it ran over and on the branches of the tree with sure-footed speed. As it ran it crowed, “Goodbye! I say good riddance! Hearth, I meet you! Now let’s get on with it!” The prairie wolf’s neck turned incorrectly all the way round, and its glowing eyes stared straight into Hearth’s. “Don’t lie to me. I can tell if you lie. I’ll hurt you if you lie.”

Hearth nodded. “Alright. I won’t lie.”

“What do you want?” Voracity asked.

Hearth didn’t think, just said, “I want to go home.”

This answer satisfied Voracity, and it nodded. “Yes. Correct. Hold onto that.” A lurching, sick, hot feeling grew around Hearth, and Voracity instructed, “Now close your eyes.”


	6. between

falling; falling; hammered in the back of the head, the back of the legs and arms; smacked against a painful barrier, spun around.  


HOLD ON commanded Voracity.  


Hearth was pinned to Voracity’s neck like a fish speared. Voracity loped sideways. It went down a path of packed dark brown earth. Its claws left furrows and kicked up soil into Hearth’s mouth. Their stomach lurched as Voracity traveled up a curving cliff, bounded through a violet mist, and to ran along the ceiling of a vast den with glowing mushrooms sprouting on all sides and a silvery lake far below. Then they couldn’t think at all, not over the wave of nausea that gave them prickly cheeks and felt like knives stabbing head to toe.  


This was familiar.


	7. The Soul of the World

“Mamae!” 

The voice of a child. 

A boy saying, “Mamae, there’s a spirit in the fire!”

An answer came from someone Hearth could not see. 

“Is there, little one? Greet it kindly.”

The child reached into the small stone bowl resting on the red bricks and withdrew a tiny handful of thorny shoots of Felandaris. His chubby fist opened above the flames, and Hearth watched the sprigs turn to cinder. Then he sprinkled a fragrance over the flames, olive oil from a small golden dish. The oil popped and flared when it hit the fire, and he pulled his hand back cautiously. The scent of familiar herbs reached Hearth invitingly.

The place they were in felt like a home. It was some sort of burrow, a shared common room, hollowed-out arches in the tumulus made private by draped layers of thick halla-wool quilts. Hearth recognized the patterns: Elgar’nan’s Sun, the Dread Wolf’s Eyes, and their personal favorite, a Sylaise Knots in the full traditional style, made by a skilled hand. This fabric shimmered and changed in a surreal way, a way that made the patterns almost seem to move, so Hearth knew that these quilts held magic. It was a dwelling like the shelters in which the clans had overwintered, before the choice was made to move constantly around the borders of human cities for survival. The practice of overwintering had been deemed too dangerous after the first clan was lost to human raiders; best to stay untethered from their violent world, and when danger threatened, to disappear into the mist with the cock crow. But at first, in those generations shortly after the Dales had been invaded and sacked, the scattered Dalish had found respite from the cold in underground shelters like this one. Some brugh had even been hollowed in cooperation with the under-hill thwarfae, the Durgen’len, to ward away the dangers of the darkspawn and their Blight. Hearth knew them as resting places for the dead. Lit candles made shadows on the walls dance.

“It’s beautiful here,” they said reverently.

The child’s face twisted oddly, and he looked over his shoulder. “Is it?”

All around the room there were elves bent to various tasks for the home. A burly man and woman carved vegetables, a circle of daughters spun wool and plaited baskets, grandparents played with the babies.

“Yes,” Hearth said. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Where am I?”

“In the slave house,” the child answered promptly. “Slave house one-eighty-eight.”

Hearth froze.

“Mamae said a spirit would not come to a slave house,” the child continued, his fingers leaving off braiding his curly orange hair and spreading excitedly towards the flames.

“Careful!” Hearth admonished, without thinking.

“It’s okay,” his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re not supposed to say, but I can already make the not-burning spell.” He beamed. Hearth looked closely at the boy, who so easily revealed his secret to a strange spirit. The magic of not being burned by fire had come easily to Hearth in life as well, but as with all matters of fire and children, parents discouraged practice.

“I won’t tell,” Hearth whispered back. The child sneezed and carelessly wiped his snot on his pants. Behind him, a dozen other children played hide and seek in the blankets draped from the ceiling.

Hearth had never wanted children born into their care, but didn’t mind them. Every turning, the Dalish clans of the northeast would gather together so that the People would come up together even at the distances of wilderness and seasons. At those events all Dalish would take on the tasks of caring for children, so that the old knowledge never passed out of living memory. Hearth remembered wiping bottoms clean and clearing noses. The giggles of the children brought smiles to the faces of the elders. There were a few who seemed especially mindful of the children, and Hearth spied a grandfather watching the boy at the fire from behind wizened eyelids. 

He, like all of them, even the young, bore golden vallaslin, so delicate in form Hearth had mistaken its subtle gleam for jewelry. 

“You’re all… enslaved? By who?”

But this was not a question which held the child’s interest, he shrugged and leaned closer to Hearth. “Are you a spirit of the Hearth?”

“I am,” Hearth answered, looking closer at his vallaslin. It was sloppily executed, the pattern shaky between the eyes, the marks of embattled resistance to the reed-pen clear in the mistakes. Or had this been applied with reed-pen? It was gilt, yet so thin as as thread as to belie its appearance as metal. It was not paint beneath the child’s skin, but gold.

The child beamed. “I thought so! You’re the first I’ve met. I mean, Wisdom told me about you, but you’re the first who came to mamae’s fire.” 

Hearth felt a flush of pity for him; he’d been branded with the vallaslin, he had not chosen it, and he had not been ready for the work. “Can I meet your mamae?”

“Okay.” Apparently unaware of his fumbling, sloppy magic, he scooped Hearth up in his palms, their unstable spirit dripping through his fingers as he concentrated hard on stopping the flames of Hearth’s body from giving him the properties of burns and heat. Hearth nudged the sides of his wardings to help, just a little. 

The boy carried them around the room. Hearth held onto his thumb. How delighted the child looked as he hopped from one caregiver to the next, explaining how he had discovered this spirit in the fire. Hearth was lifted up and presented to the many smiling faces of elves, and they were all wearing vallaslin. Yet this was not a Dalish home. Nor was it a home in one of the alienages made to imprison city elves, and Hearth was sure it was not a Tevinter home. The elves of Hearth’s time would never so benevolently welcome a child’s interest in the appearance of a spirit. 

Though Hearth did not know this place, they knew their People: elders busy crafting, stringing instruments, carving pipes. The grandfather with the wrinkled brow, twining roots into cords. His wispy grey hair was weightless under his red cap. He smiled gently as he listened to the boy’s rapid speech about esoteric measurements of Fade and spirit. The boy sounded like he was repeating words too big for a young child’s tongue, but the basis of his spellcrafting was accurate by Hearth’s understanding. The boy’s excitement stirred the fussiness of babies nearby. 

“How did you come to be here?” Hearth tried asking the grandfather. “Who is keeping you here?”

But the grandfather either could not hear Hearth, or did not wish to answer a minor spirit. In fact none of the elders had spoken to Hearth, letting the boy lecture without interrupting, humming in acknowledgment and smiling until he scampered along.

“But where is your Mamae?” Hearth asked the boy once he had shown them around to all the elders. Looking confused by the question, the child just opened his palms over the fire and let Hearth slide back down onto the logs, and then darted away.

When he had gone, Hearth said, “I’ve met practically the whole family.” 

Voracity, who had ducked behind a log to avoid the child’s attention, sniffed and grumbled. So the demon didn’t like the company of mortals. 

Voracity’s annoyed glower shifted suddenly, and they bounded back behind the fire, flattening their peachy fur under a log.

Hearth looked up and met the young elf mage’s grey-violet eyes.

He said, in a somber way, “Mamae said to tell you hello, and not much more.”

“Oh. Well, then. Hello,” Hearth said.

“Hello!” He beamed, then asked, “Will you befriend me, spirit?”

Hearth pretended to ponder, tapping their chin. “That depends. Are you a good friend?”

Caught off-guard, the child stopped and contemplated the question, looking very seriously at his toes.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, his gawky ears twitching.

“I’ll let you figure that out before making any commitments,” Hearth said.

“That’s reasonable,” the child replied thoughtfully.

“Why don’t you go help your grandfather weave?” Hearth suggested, and when they were alone, out of curiosity they tried to venture away from the fire, to see more the brugh. But as soon as the heat on their legs was diminished, they felt that their spirit form was going to dissipate and fly away, out the hole in the sod roof. So the fire was their safe haven; some strange magic threatened to pull them into the sky.

After night fell, Hearth found it easier to leave the fire. The coals were burning low, and the light from the hole in the sod roof was shining with a queer green light. Hearth thought to explore, when from behind them, Voracity graciously offered its advice to stay put, lest the elves banish Hearth from the mortal realm.

They turned back to see Voracity staring with its wide-open moon eyes, curled up into a small ball under a log. The powerful spirit had slept all day, complaining drowsily that bringing Hearth here had been very difficult work indeed and it just needed a little nap.

Now Voracity slowly climbed back out of the fire logs, perching next to Hearth on a cindery branch. 

Hearth argued, “They are enslaved. We have to do something.”

Voracity barked out a chuckle. “We have to do absolutely nothing.”

“Come now, there are children — “

“And I am a demon,” the demon said. “These others are as unlike me as another could be.”

Hearth’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps that is true.” In their short time in the brugh they had come to love this big, raucous family, the busy comings and goings of the elders, the children jostling for space and never wanting for attention, and the easy use of magic was everywhere, not solely reserved practices in the Keeper’s hands. Hearth would do everything they could to free them.

“You intend to stay here, and you will try to help this poor family.”

“Of course. You should stay also, and help me.”

Voracity stood and primly shook the soot from its paws. Then it jumped from the fire, and became as tall as a man before the hearth, its paws making no impression on the dirt floor. It did not seem to struggle, as Hearth did, to stay anchored outside of the heat of the fire. “Perhaps, if your journey returns you to me, I suppose that then we’ll see if all your pain has been for nothing. Then I’ll eat you.” A passing elf walked through Voracity on his way upstairs.

Heath sighed. “If I let you eat me, will you wake me up again right after?”

“What do you mean, ‘wake you up’?” Voracity tilted its head curiously.

“Like what you did to make me appear… like this. When you guided me to the tree.”

“I don’t think you quite understand that you are a singularity — there is no way to begin again with the self you are now,” Voracity cautioned. “Be careful.”

“I’m mortal? Even like this?” Hearth looked down at their brilliant hand of light, their arm made of flickering golden flames, their body set ablaze. 

“What is mortal?” Voracity asked.

Hearth started to answer, then just shrugged.

Voracity left through the wall, passing out of the room silent and unseen.

The next morning, the child announced, “The spirit is a Hearth spirit. Wisdom told me how to put a spell of guarding on the logs. That way Hearth can help us always…”

There was scattered whispering, chairs being moved back over stone, hurried scraping of dishes. A caregiver came to take the soup from over the fire and frowned at Hearth. She asked the child “You say Wisdom told you this, little one? Are you certain it was Wisdom with whom you spoke?”

The child seemed surprised, but not scared. He murmured, “I don’t know…” 

“It is not wise to bind spirits,” the grandfather said. “I will go with you to meet this Wisdom, and hear what it has to say for myself.”

The next morning the grandfather did not wake from sleep. 

There was a shadow over the house. 

In the corner, the little boy was very quiet, very still.

He looked gaunt and sad.

Hearth wanted to help, but didn’t know how.

Then, suddenly, Hearth knew.

Hearth said out loud, stunned, “That is Solas as a child.”

Solas.

But… how had they forgotten him? 

Solas.

Tall, droop-eyed, plain-clothed, shoulders square, never hunched, proud, deceitful Solas. A powerful enemy. _Beloved_ , their thoughts supplied. Hearth rebuked the thought. No. A powerful, dangerous enemy. A man who would collapse the Veil which separated the realms. A man who would burn a world. The influx of memory hit them: meeting him, his hand, how it touched; his smile, his sad eyes; his sorry kindness and all his apologies, his far-away gaze when he woke from Dreaming. Dizzying, astonishing in a way that made them want to curl back into the grave and hide, Hearth remembered meeting a god of another age, remembered how lonely he’d sounded when they had kissed in a dream.

“I am beyond the Veil,” Hearth said. They rocked to their feet, then leaned against the burning log to steady their legs. “There is no Veil in this world, and Solas is a child. At home, with his family. This is the world of the ancients, so this is the world of his people. Solas… must be why I was pulled here, of all places. To his fire. To his clan.” 

They felt like their stomach was twisting. 

Solas. 

How had they forgotten him?

How could they have forgotten him?

The sound of many voices rising up together in song pulled them from their panicked thoughts. Hearth looked beyond the veil of fire and saw that all the elves of the house had gathered in the common room together. They were dressed simply with baskets on their hips, and they sang in harmony. It was a tune called Moonward She Goes, and Hearth recognized the harmonies and the melody, but at first the singing was so quiet that they could not hear the words. The singing was accompanied by movement. It was Solas who led the procession of the Dead, going widdershins with a basket of dried reeds in his arms. As the procession passed the fire, Hearth smelled the light fragrance of petals, watched as each person withdrew from their basket a handful of mixed herbs. Pink petals fluttered, dark purple seed pods rattled. Hearth opened their mouth and ate, tasting salt and rosemary oil. 

As they passed the fire, Hearth heard the song’s words.

Like sparks painting the Fade with light, Hearth watched the Elvhen words of the People’s song go out like a summoning. 

Not just _like_ a summoning.

It was a spell.

Hearing the language Hearth had studied in books spoken aloud by elves who lived hand in hand with the realm of magic, Hearth knew loss as deeply as they had when they had walked amid the floating towers of the sundered Vir Dirthara. In the few tomes left to the Dalish, the paltry words recorded by Dalish scholars, who only distantly remembered the tongue of Arlathan, could not have retained this language as it was sung in this time. 

The words of the Elvhen People traveled freely between the magic of the Fade and the immutable forms of the elves. Their throats carried five meanings to every word, every phrase of music shaped by the breath in their lungs to tell a story of living and dying, sleeping and waking, traveling and coming home, in an evocation of generations of wisdom, the stories weaving together in a cascade of overlapping spells cast merely by the way the metaphors and cadences knit along the surface of the Fade. It was stronger than any summoning Hearth had ever seen or felt. Hearth felt more angry at the fall of Elvhenan than ever before. 

Preservation and reconstruction had been the lifelong purpose of every Dalish, Hearth included. 

It had been difficult work. Language reconstruction in particular had been important to those Dalish gifted in magic, and what few spellbooks remained in Elvish were treasured and recited to the mage children of the every new generation. All Dalish lived with the cost of human cruelty: fluent speakers were hundreds of years and multiple Blights separated from the founding of the Dales. Of the language, so much had been lost to slavery, atrocity, and the invasion of the shems with their nightmare empires spreading subjugation everywhere the elves tried to run. In life, Hearth had spoken the small pieces of the Elvhen language kept alive by the Dalish mages with pride.

Hearth had also believed that, through study, and by delving in the forgotten places of the world to discover the lost secrets of their People, the traditions carried forward by clan Lavellan might one day rebuild something of Elvhenan. They, and the other survivors of the fall of Arlathan, destroyed by human greed, might unravel the mysteries in the tomes left behind by their people, and learn how to cast the strange spells preserved in the ancient grimoires. 

But what, truly, had been preserved at the founding of the Dalish empire? What had the Dalish kept in their care? 

The Elvhen language had not even survived the raising of the Veil.

The language the Keepers had hoped to reconstruct by deciphering the few written records kept by the clans, and gathering what oral traditions remained after the massacre of the Dales, and the years of studying, comparing notes and advancements made at the clan gatherings, new translations of particularly obscure spells debated late into the night…! But for all they’d grasped at this history and language, the words of the Elvhen people had been made of magic in a way unknowable in the future under the Veil. 

Hearth watched a grandmother holding her hand on the body of the deceased, and as she sang, her letters were sigils, accessing and connecting to a dimension beyond both written and oral record, a dimension fed by and amplified by the Fade, the language itself shaped to make her will manifest. _When the Veil goes up_ , Hearth thought, _the unsounded grammar in the shapes of these spellwrought words will vanish from existence. Vanish from memory._

Even the elves who had awoken from a long uthenera, even if they had joined the Dalish and wanted to bring their wisdom to the people — as Hearth had come to suspect — those elves who brought fragments of the language would still not even be able to remember what they had lost. They would only have known… diminishment, a sense of loss, but not its source. Not even the emptiness of knowing something had been taken would survive the banishment of the Fade.

This language would not be complete after magic was hidden away. Without the realm of dreams and spirits, the essence of Elvhen was stripped from its stem, the metaphysical dimensions of its alphabet echoing only lonely, awkward silence. 

What Hearth had dreamed of as a Dalish elf could never have been, not with the Veil in place. It had all been futile, the months spent in isolation archiving and researching, the lives risked to reclaim a spellbook from Tevinter magisters! Or to retrieve a scroll from a Circle tower! None of it had brought Hearth any closer to this vital, lush song. And now, they were moved to tears of gratitude, not grief. 

_At least in my death I have been granted the gift of hearing my People Speak this spellwrought song. It’s like… a hybrid, the breath of the mortal realm and the magic of the Fade. It is so beautiful. I have been granted the gift of seeing my People’s song make the very air dance._

Hearth wanted to speak in the fullness of this language. The child had not spoken like this, so there was a common language, less lush with magic, for speaking with children --- or perhaps this mourning song was of a specialized nature. 

Hearth listened, spellbound, to the luminous stanzas filled with magic as the family sang, and then chanted, the story of the grandfather’s life: and it was like waves cresting to shore.

The song was a summoning at heart, and at its crescendo Hearth was pulled temporarily from the fire. They were pulled into the crackling center of the People who sang in the brugh. The song made them move to create the story of Death. Where before they had been anchored by the fire, now they were anchored to the People. They felt their grief. They had danced often in life, and now danced in the movements demanded by the spell-song of the Dead. Their fire drew other spirits, and as Hearth twirled in the center of the brugh, and a small spirit that felt like Compassion leapt with its arms raised around them, and a spirit of Valor waltzed stiffly with a wisp, they saw the eyes of the People wide with wonder and heavy with tears.

On the third night there was fasting, and the body of the Dead was the center of rites, the heart of the home for the time of mourning. There were many oils and perfumes sprinkled into the fire. Hearth opened their lips and drank.

There were two days of silence after the body was removed. The brugh was dark at night, lit only by one, or sometimes two, candles. In the day birdsong came from the hole in the ceiling which led to daylight. It seemed that the needs of mourning had interrupted the normal schedule of the family, but on the third day of silence first the grandmother, and then the rest of the family spoke again, and the elders started to come and go again by the stairs. Hearth heard that the language of the elders was indeed spellwrought. Adults evoked the Fade to fill in all their nuanced meanings, and the language spoken with children was a simpler language, similar to the mundane Elvish Hearth had known in life, and had spoken brokenly with other Dalish scholars.

Hearth tried to learn this tongue by overhearing conversations. But as they listened, they grew uneasy. They understood some of what was said: there was talk that Keepers had heard of the spirit visitors, how Valor and Compassion had been summoned to the brugh to dance for the Dead, and there was talk of danger in attracting the Keeper’s attention by making alliances with spirits. Hearth wanted to speak with the elders, but none of them would answer Hearth’s questions when they used the fire, and if Hearth tried to leave the fire they felt the tug towards the ceiling and to the little hole where the smoke ascended, drawn by whatever magnetic force was inherent to that syrupy golden sunlight.

They didn’t know how they had forgotten him. And for many nights, he was not there in the common room.

Finally, when the light in the hole in the ceiling was darkening yet again, young Solas came to Hearth. He sprinkled the oil over the fire and asked, “Will you stay here, spirit?”

“Yes, I’m staying here,” Hearth answered. They searched his face for recognition, but he was only a child. “I won’t leave,” they said, trying to tell him so much more.

“I understand,” the young Solas nodded, stoic now compared to his enthusiasm the first day Hearth had manifested in the fire.

“Do you want to stay my friend?” Hearth asked.

The child who would become the Dread Wolf didn’t hesitate in his smile, his enthusiastic, “I would like that very much.”

“Good. Then we stay friends,” Hearth sealed the promise. 

Solas did not come back to the fire after that. Hearth stopped seeing him in the common room.

More days and nights passed, and Hearth sat alone in the fire, unable to move from the fire for fear of being sucked up into the sky, waiting for Solas to return.

Hearth overheard someone say that a Keeper would come to banish them soon. Hearth had seen no other spirits living in the house and Valor and Compassion had been dispatched at the end of the funerary tributes. There were whispers about casting the spirit from the fire, “for our safety, before anyone finds out”. Something was coming. Hearth helped the fire stay lit through the cold nights. But now no one came near, and no sweet oils fell into the flames.

Restlessness was always nearby.

The memory of who Solas was and what he had done pervaded their every thought. They worked to remember the important things they’d need: his tells, his weaknesses. His motivation for wanting to end the world, what little they knew of it. The Dread Wolf had been one of the gods Hearth’s people had called to. In their mortal flesh, Hearth had prayed to be remembered by the ones who could not hear: the elven gods. They had prayed to him. They had prayed to be known by him once more, a god of the ancient people, he who stalked the perimeter of the camps, the betrayer of gods, the adversary of Keepers.

It wasn’t too late.

They could save the world that he would destroy.

They could save him from himself.

If Hearth could learn how the Veil was made, there was a chance — a slim chance, but when had bad odds ever stopped them? — that they could send this information forward in Time and give Dorian and Vivienne the knowledge they’d need to uphold the Veil between the realms, and stop the world from burning.

In his distant future, Solas’ claim was that the Veil’s fall may kill the world, but that the world that came after would restore the world of the elves. Hearth knew it would be wonderful, to have the realms restored side-by-side; this world where a spirit could go freely from Dream to Waking and back into Dream with nothing but a slip sideways.

The scent of menthol and camphor came heavily to Hearth. They looked up and saw the gentle-eyed, lined face of the grandmother who had placed her hand on the body of the Dead.

“Do you know they are planning to send you away, Spirit of Hearth?” the grandmother asked.

“Where is the little boy?” Hearth asked in return, urgently. “The one who took me from the fire?”

“Elsewhere,” the grandmother answered evenly. The scent of camphor oil rose from the grandmother’s hands as she cracked her knuckles. “The overseers will train him for his talent.”

“Overseers?” Hearth asked.

The grandmother sighed. “We have been grateful for your warm fires, gentle Spirit, but fear the consequences of too free an association with one of your kind.”

“What consequences?” Hearth pressed.

“Ones far outside my control,” the woman shook her head. “Gentle Spirit, if you can go before the Keeper comes, it would be for the best. Go and find a more hospitable fire to inhabit. I will remember you with gratefulness for my bad joints on these winter nights.”

“Where is the boy who was here?” Hearth asked again. “Please, if you could take me to him, or point the way?”

“That would not be wise,” the grandmother said disapprovingly. “Go along, now. Shoo. Shoo, spirit.” She waved her hands, the sharp scent of her healing lotions reminding Hearth of their mother’s hands with mortar and pestle, their uncle’s hands as he wrapped their bitten leg in linens. The scent of ease after battles and aching muscle.

“Please!” Hearth reached up. “I need to be with him — it’s important, I’m not just asking for myself. Others need me to find him. They will depend on me.”

The grandmother frowned. “You act on the whims of another?” she asked. Hearth sighed with frustration.

“No. Not… directly, no. I’m not… it’s for my friends, to help them.” Hearth tried to think of how much to reveal, but it was too late. The grandmother was warding, and wouldn’t stop even when Hearth protested. “I’m not going to hurt him! Or you! Or anyone! I just need the chance to talk to him…”

“Alright,” the grandmother said, her eyes glowing green, her hands moving busily over runes in the air above the fireplace. “Then you can talk to him when he’s ready to stand against you, should you wish him harm.”

“I don’t! I don’t, believe me — “

The same wrenching, gut-twisting sensation as when they’d been catapulted through the Veil seized every bit of their essence, and they launched out of the time and place of the fire in the dwelling of the ancient elves, Solas’ family, and into the place of nothing-before-something.

They cussed, and Voracity came to their side, its golden-peach tail twitching, its amorphous ears swiveling all directions. Its glowing eyes appraised Hearth, sprawled upside-down in the void. 

“Well, I hope you fulfilled your purpose, kitten. I didn’t think I’d be eating you so soon, but —“

“No eating me,” Hearth said, pushing to their feet and balling their fists. They paced, thinking. “Is it normal to forget things when you die?” Hearth asked abruptly. “I don’t know how it’s possible… how I could have forgotten him, everything about him?”

“Oh yes, it’s quite common to lose memories to death,” Voracity answered flippantly. “I wouldn’t know how it normally works, as I haven’t ever had the chance to die. Not like you, kitten!” It trilled like a bell, “Well that’s my part in all this over! Are you quite at home? Is this is where you want to be? Then I’ll leave you, as I have many better things to do.” Voracity shook its glassy fur and stood, trotting away. Hearth got the feeling that their banishment thoroughly delighted the demon.

Hearth tried to puzzle it together, a feeling in their chest like a heartbeat going fast. Dorian, the mage who had brought their uncle to complete the summoning of their spirit from the grave — he had sent them beyond the Veil, beyond the edge of time. Hearth stared down at their prosthetic. Such magics might have destroyed Hearth. It almost had. Except… Voracity had found what had been left of their spirit, and had nurtured their weak and sleeping form out of the void. And had delivered them to where Solas was.

“Why do you want me here?” Hearth asked Voracity.

“What an assumption,” Voracity said dryly. “You are nothing to me, kitten, excepting a splendidly decadent meal. I might get fat on your delicious power.”

“I have a power you want?” 

Voracity’s moon-eyes stared patiently at Hearth’s left arm.

“It is ve-ry unusual for a spirit to be able to touch runes with the Speech,” it said.

“You mean my arm? Explain.”

“It is a craft of thwarfae magic. It is enchanted. The runes are of magic made. In your fingers dance the magics of the immutable realm, the bindings and enchantments. In your palm, a style of magic more like carven stone than woven flesh turns your digits, so that you wield this construction of solidity despite your spirit nature. The heart of all creation flows through it. Can you draw these sectioned pieces together and push them apart with that indomitable will of yours? And here, there is, unsevered even by the End of Time, a pocket dimension, a storehouse of potions and small things that might be summoned to hand. The will for magic sits in the well of the soul, and yours can carry magic even through your death.”

“I’ll take three guesses as to why you’re looking at my arm like a braise of lamb,” Hearth said archly.

“Yes, kitten,” Voracity smiled. “I want to eat you up…”

“I need to get to him. I need to find him.” They wondered, would it have been easier to find him in childhood, and teach him from the start to preserve the world? No, because the world with the Veil he made was the world they needed to preserve. So he had to make the Veil, and they had to be there to witness it, and pass on the knowledge of its making. They couldn’t rely on changing his mind. As a god they had known him as a sly-tongued wolf, most devoted to deception. Rather than change his mind, they would gather information, and give it to their friends who fought against him in the future. “Will you do what you did the first time, carry me to him?” Hearth asked Voracity. 

“You did that. I carried you noplace but the place you put yourself.” The glimmering prairie wolf demon paced alongside Hearth, its glowing eyes inscrutable. Hearth didn’t know if Voracity was aware of the nature of the Veil and Solas’ role in erecting it between the realms, so they decided to be cautious. 

“I’ll try again to find him again. We try until I get it right.”

“You seek to pact with me, demon?” Voracity said. Hearth folded their arms. Voracity snickered and jumped up to perch mid-air. “It won’t come cheaply, my aid to you. Are you prepared to accept what it may cost?”

“Name the price, and we’ll see.”

Voracity sniffed. “You’re in a pretty position for bargaining.”

“You were interested in my arm.”

Voracity’s eyes glinted.

“You can eat it, at a time of my choosing.”

“Hmm,” Voracity said. “That will be a powerful tie to bind between us, demon. I will know always where you are, and be able to call myself to you. Will you simply give it to me now, and avoid such a troublesome burden breathing always down your neck?”

“I’d rather not, thank you kindly. At the time of my choosing.”

“And in return, I will spirit you once more to your friend’s side. You shall need to guide our spell, and learn to take hold the reigns of time.” 

“Only once more?” Hearth asked.

“That is what I will give,” the demon sniffed. “Learning to walk time-ways will make my help redundant. It is a powerful gift I offer. You seem eager enough to learn.”

Hearth considered it: if they could not learn the spell, would Voracity abandon them in the wrong spot along Solas’ timeline? What if the time the demon dropped them was only seconds before the Veil rose, and Hearth had no opportunity to learn enough of its making? But perhaps the knowledge of how to traverse time would help them send their knowledge forward through the Veil to Dorian and Vivienne; Hearth still had not puzzled out how to get the information about raising the Veil through that impenetrable barrier between this ancient time and the world of the future.

“The offer is sufficient,” Hearth said finally.

“As is yours,” Voracity stared hungrily at Hearth’s arm. The bargain struck, Hearth jumped onto Voracity’s back and Voracity jumped through time. They came out together in the dead void. Vast nothingness flowed along the path of Voracity’s strides. Then, mid-stride, it unhinged its jaw and vomited. Overhead the ever-shifting, ever-changing upside-down world came into view. 

Solas.

“Focus!” Voracity roared over the rising sound of bells, the raucous noise flooding upwards, absorbing Hearth, dashing them to pieces. Voracity’s voice cut through, tight with worry, “Focus!”

Navigating the way Voracity moved felt like chaos to Hearth.

“Help!” they yelped.

Hearth heard Voracity sigh, and the pressure to learn the shape of the spell shone brightly in Hearth’s mind. “Like this,” Voracity shouted over the noise.

Hearth struggled to understand the spell as Voracity showed it to them. Their prosthetic arm ached painfully; it dragged behind them, unwilling to go along with their spirit.

_Solas._

Their navigation was poor; a barrier came up against them. Hearth was able to avoid it, only to slam straight into the next. Voracity wheezed as they spun out on impact, like being dashed on rocks by an undertow. Hearth held on tighter and reached for the first place they could hold along the tributary flowing alongside the life he lived: Solas.

And Hearth tried to focus, but they’d never loved such a destructive person.

 _Solas_ , Hearth thought, fighting against the slow drag of panic, fighting to grasp for him, fighting to go home. _Solas._

_I forgot you._

_How?_


End file.
